In car mini ITX build

StephenLawUK

StephenLawUK

StephenLawUK

Associate
Joined
23 Dec 2008
Posts
355
Location
University of Surrey
A friend of mine wants to build a in car PC for various tasks such as reading the in car sensors and running satnav, while also being able to say run winamp to play music using his car speakers. He has also found a cable to run from the cars dataport to a USB port on a PC and some software to show the car info. He would just like to see if anyone else has done this here and could give him some advice and tips, also what components to get as me and him have only ever built normal desktops and not and SFF builds.
 
I would point you the way of a couple of websites but not sure if it's allowed, suffice to say, entering the relevent words into a search engine should find them anyway.

For a really good system you'd be lookng at an Atom based itx board (possibly even a low end C2D) with on-board graphics, a nice little lap-top hard drive (or maybe an SSD), and a touch-screen around 7". Power would be supplied by something like an M2-ATX psu, and the bulk of it could be built into the spare wheel well or glovebox, with the screen fabbed into the dash.

All you need to connect it to the cars sound system is 3.2mm to phono adapters running to the auxillary in on the head unit, or direct to a set of amps. I'd try to keep the head unit though as usb radio's aren't that good.
 
Thanks for the help :) We were not sure about the PSU as cars power is DC while normal PC PSU's run off AC. Would the tasks he wants to run need an atom or can we get away with a really cheap CPU running a nlited XP? He just upgraded to a vertex in his PC recently so has an old core series SSD to use. Was going to be into the glove box as thats where all the current wiring for his sound system is going to.
 
Doesn't have to be an Atom, its just good as it doesn't need to be powerful and is cheap. An old CPU should be fine, though you want it to be low powered. That is the important part.

You can by AC/DC adapters easily for mini-itx board. Keep an eye out of mini-itx boards that have the PSU built into them - my commell LV-677DC does.
 
Hey dude.

I've done this. point your friend to www.digital-car.co.uk for some very helpful chaps indeed.

ITX, mATX are your friend here. You dont need as much processing power as you think. A mATX board with a 1ghz in built CPU would be plenty. You'll ne a specialist PSU (the M1 ATX is the favourite. Google this.) but otherwise you can use regular PC gear.

Remember though it's all about low power. My spec is:

90w M1ATX PSU
Jetway J7F2 1.5GHz C7 CN700 Mainboard - 12W TDP
512mb Corsair Value DDR2
4x 7v 120mm Yate Loons with grills
Custom enclosure from MDF and carpeted with vehicle upholstery. looks nice in the boot :)

You can get more powerful, but you dont really need it in my opinion. Like i said, get your mate to sign up to www.digital-car.co.uk. They have a members market too.
 
M2-ATX psu offers a bit more power than the M1, There's M3 and M4 versions now which I think are 12/24v selectable too. These are all DC input, 12v+ and - with a connection from the ignition goes in, and out comes the feeds for the system.

CPU wise the via's have been favourites for years, 1Ghz upwards is more than enough for playing mp3's, but I mentioned an Atom as you could get the dual-core version which would help a bit if you were using it for sat-nav and mp3's or even movies at the same time.
 
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